


you promised to never let go

by writing_way_too_much



Series: better things fall together [2]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Apocalypse, Fluff, Lots of kissing, M/M, Mild Angst, Tattoos, but lowkey, dowoon gets a boyfriend who remains unnamed cause i didnt wanna pick someone for him, mentions of famine and disease, rated teen for where i probably swore, the lyrics are obvi day6 songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 00:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14965463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_way_too_much/pseuds/writing_way_too_much
Summary: "i'm never letting you go again." // the world's ended but sungjin has younghyun back in his arms, and isn't that really all that matters?





	you promised to never let go

**Author's Note:**

> h oly fu ck this took a month and a half im sorry plots are hard. if you've stuck with me for this long waiting for this sequel BLESS YOUR HEART.
> 
> title from "tightrope" on the greatest showman soundtrack
> 
> disclaimer: this is completely fictitious. i own nothing except the plot and dowoon's boyfriend.

winter sets in.

it’s the worst, because they don’t have artificial heating anymore. sungjin’s mother builds fires every morning to convince the three boys to get out of their warm beds. sungjin feels like he’s perpetually shivering.

at least this year there was a good harvest.

“the first year after the world ended, there was barely any food for winter,” sungjin tells younghyun one morning. they’re wrapped together under a blanket while sungjin’s mom brews tea.

“ugh,” younghyun says. he still sounds half asleep, and his head is resting heavily on sungjin’s shoulder.

“yeah,” sungjin mumbles. he closes his eyes, tries not to think too deeply about that winter. “some people starved to death simply because there wasn’t food. everyone that survived was hungry all the time. it was awful.”

“but that’s done,” dowoon’s voice says. sungjin looks up. he’s standing in front of them, quilt from his bed wrapped around his shoulders, hair following some laws of gravity unbeknownst to sungjin. “yeah, it sucked, but you gotta get over it, hyung.”

“tea,” sungjin’s mother says quietly, placing a few cups on the coffee table in front of them. dowoon sits down on sungjin’s other side and crinkles his nose at the strong scent.

“has it snowed yet?” younghyun asks after some moments of silence that are tense for a reason sungjin can’t quite identify.

“no, thankfully,” sungjin’s mother says, sitting down in the armchair with her own cup of tea. “then we have to shovel it, and it’s inconvenient.”

dowoon blinks at her. it reminds sungjin of a puppy. he ruffles dowoon’s hair just because. “but you can build  _ snowmen _ ,” dowoon says.

younghyun laughs. one month three weeks five days that sungjin’s been able to hear that laugh. he snuggles in closer.

  
  
  
  
  


“mom! guess what?”

“no, i wanna tell her,” younghyun argues, pushing past dowoon.

“she’s my mother first,” sungjin shouts, still running to catch up with the other two. “i get the right, i think--”

“she loves me more!” dowoon teases, turning around briefly to stick his tongue out at sungjin. younghyun almost trips over him and they both burst into laughter.

sungjin grins to himself. it warms his heart to see younghyun and dowoon getting along. he likes knowing that the people most important to him are most important to each other as well.

“it’s snowing,” the three of them manage to say at once when sungjin’s mother opens the front door to see what all the ruckus is about.

she seems torn, unsure if she should laugh or scoff or curse the sky. sungjin’s done all three in the two winters since the world ended. “is it the kind that you can stick together?”

“no,” younghyun says. “it’s only flakes, i don’t know if it’s even accumulating.”

“always such a science nerd,” sungjin teases.

younghyun blushes and kisses him briefly. “shut up, hyung.”

“there are children here,” dowoon says, referring to himself.

sungjin’s mother does laugh at that. “you think i didn’t see you at the dance a couple of weeks ago with that boy?”

dowoon goes violently red and mutters something that sounds like “close the door you’re letting all the cold in” before escaping inside to his room.

  
  
  
  
  
  


the snow sticks.

sungjin wakes up to see a crisp, shining white everywhere. it’s pretty enough that he gets out of bed without complaint. the snow hides all of the cracked pavement and rundown buildings that have spread since the world ended.

“younghyun, baby, wake up,” he says, prodding younghyun’s shoulder. “the snow stuck.”

“accumulated,” younghyun says, turning back over and settling more firmly into bed.

“come look at it, it’s really pretty,” sungjin wheedles. “you could probably write an entire album’s worth of songs off of this.”

“that pretty, huh, hyung?” younghyun huffs, but he gets up all the same.

they have a massive snowball fight that afternoon, squinting in the sun, freezing their fingers off because the snow soaks right through the fabric of their gloves. sungjin’s mother turns out to be the biggest threat, and they even go three-on-one and she  _ still  _ wins.

“mom, you never told me you were this good at throwing snowballs,” sungjin says once they’ve all changed into dry clothes and dowoon has made hot chocolate without burning himself.

“i’m full of secrets,” she says, winking.

the sun sets early because it’s wintertime. sungjin isn’t tired, though, and neither is younghyun. they bundle back up and sneak out the side door, holding hands, marveling at all the stars they can see without light pollution, at how the light of the moon reflects off the snow.

“i love you,” sungjin says quietly, staring up at the sky.

“and i love you,” younghyun says, the same volume, the same amount of fondness in his voice. he squeezes sungjin’s hand.

they don’t kiss. they don’t need to.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“do you ever miss it?”

sungjin puts a bookmark in the novel he’s reading, sets it down, stretches. he winces at the cracking sound his back makes. “miss what?”

younghyun is sitting on the floor against sungjin’s bed, idly plucking at strings on his bass. he’s got a pad of paper halfway filled with words and a pencil and is attempting to write a new song.

“the way the world was before.”

sungjin considers it.

“well, not having heating is kinda sucky during wintertime,” he starts. “and i do miss being able to just google things. but i honestly think that the world, at least our part of it, is better now.”

younghyun makes a noise that doesn’t exactly sound like agreement. “really, hyung? no technology? living like primative people?”

“i think that right here right now is okay and i don’t miss what it was before,” sungjin says in one breath.

the bass makes an angry chord, some kind of diminished minor thing. “but there are some places that are worse off. like all the parts of the world that were in desperate poverty before the world ended? they’re even worse now. i saw a lot of horrible things while junhyeok and i were traveling back, things that make me doubt what you’re saying.”

frustration itches, right on the back of sungjin’s neck. “okay, but, you can’t solve everything--”

“shouldn’t you be able to, though?”

“no,” sungjin says. they’re both getting worked up now. sungjin is sort of standing from the chair he’d been reading on. “one person isn’t going to decide the fate of the entire world--”

“--that’s not fair--”

“--why isn’t it--”

“--because-because-because, you should be able to  _ help _ people!” younghyun shouts, and they’re both on their feet now, and sungjin’s nails are digging into his palm. “there are people dying this winter because they don’t have food and  _ you aren’t doing anything to help _ !”

“because i can’t!” sungjin shouts back. he can feel tears burning behind his eyes. “i’m not--i was never you, younghyun! i never thought i could be a protagonist, always knew i was destined to be a supporting character, and i was  _ fine  _ with that, i was okay with just reading and singing and loving you, and shouldn’t that be enough?”

silence hangs.

it’s the worst kind, the kind that’s louder than any words.

  
  
  
  
  


_ shouldn’t that be enough? _

  
  
  


 

sungjin sleeps on the couch that night. two months zero weeks four days that he’s been sleeping in the same bed as younghyun. this is his first night alone in a while.

  
  
  
  


“i’m sorry,” younghyun says the next morning, as sungjin’s mother is building up a fire and dowoon is practicing brewing tea. “i shouldn’t have yelled.”

“i shouldn’t have either,” sungjin says. he bites his lip. “i think you’re right, but you’re also wrong. it’s okay to want to do good, but there is also a point where you need to accept that the world is too disorganized to save everyone.”

younghyun closes his eyes. “you’re totally right,” he says, more of a choked whisper than anything. “you always are, hyung. but the things--the things i saw--”

sungjin holds him while he cries.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“so, dowoon,” sungjin’s mother says. “how are things going with that boy?”

they’re eating dinner, some kind of meat and vegetable thing. sungjin isn’t really paying attention to the food, more focused on holding younghyun’s hand under the table, rubbing circles into the back of his hand with his thumb. at his mother’s words, he looks up to see dowoon blushing and stuttering.

“he’s--he’s really nice,” dowoon eventually gets out.

“have you been meeting with him a lot?”

dowoon nods. “we go on walks, and talk a lot, and goof off, and...yeah.” he trails off and stares at his plate with a laser-like intensity.

sungjin decides to stop beating around the bush. “do you like him?”

dowoon yelps and, from the sound of it, bangs his knee on the table. “may i be excused?”

he’s actually eaten most of what’s on his plate, and sungjin’s mother can’t refuse.

“he totally likes him,” younghyun says once dowoon’s put his plate in the sink and scampered up the stairs. “did you  _ see  _ the way he was blushing?”

  
  
  
  
  


dowoon creeps into sungjin’s room in the middle of the night and tells sungjin in a whisper that he thinks he’s in love. he sounds on the verge of tears, and sungjin sacrifices an hour of sleep to hold his little brother and tell him, over and over again, that it is okay for a boy to love another boy. (he’s been loving another boy for two months one week one day.)

  
  
  
  
  
  


“i kissed him today,” dowoon says the next night.

sungjin feels his chapped lips split with how wide he’s smiling. he presses his sleeve to his mouth to soak up the drop of blood. “that’s  _ awesome _ , dowoonie! tell me everything.”

dowoon looks down, blushes, smiles a tiny private smile, and then proceeds to take another hour of sungjin’s sleep with his story.

sungjin doesn’t mind.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


disease comes.

sungjin thinks that it’s really remarkable that they managed to stay plague-free for so long. he remembers reading a history book that talked about how disease was the most effective killer of all time. the modern world had been well on its way to eradicating it, but now the world’s ended, and medicine with it. the closest they’ve got to doctors is those with knowledge of herbs.

for a terrifying two weeks, sungjin’s mother does not allow the three boys to step foot outside of their house. “we are not contaminated,” she tells them, the strictest sungjin’s ever heard her. “we have food, and water, and wood for the fire. you are not to go outside these walls.”

seeing the effects of the diseases that sweep their community is more than enough to get them to obey her orders.

when it’s gone, when those who managed to survive are well again and the dead are buried, they’ve lost a third of their community. mostly the elderly and young children, but still.

a memorial service is held for all those that perished. sungjin sees dowoon sniffling into his boyfriend’s chest. he himself is tucked firmly into the curve of younghyun’s side, and tears keep slipping out.

“it’s hard,” sungjin’s mother tells him quietly later that night. dowoon and younghyun have gone to bed but sungjin is staring into a cup of tea long gone cold at the kitchen table. “we can’t save everyone, you know.”

“i know,” sungjin whispers. his throat is dry and his voice comes out cracked and hoarse. he takes a sip of tea. “doesn’t make it any less worse, though.”

“none of us died and that is what we should be thankful for,” his mother says.

she holds him like he’s a toddler who’s had a bad dream while he cries, in stifled, fractured sobs.

  
  
  
  
  


younghyun kisses him when he comes to bed, kisses him breathless and senseless and stupid. three months zero weeks six days since he’s been able to do that.

  
  
  
  
  


younghyun’s written a lot of songs, mostly for sungjin. 

“i’ll remember” makes sungjin cry.

_ i’m afraid i’ll lose you _

_ even in my memories _

sungjin’s personal favorite is “habits.”

_ even when you weren’t here _

_ i always had you by my side _

sungjin’s mother asks them to play for her and they gladly oblige, sitting together on the living room couch while she perches on the chair. sungjin’s voice weaves under and over younghyun’s as they trade verses and the choruses and sungjin’s mother gives them a standing ovation when they’re done.

younghyun kisses away the tears later that night. sungjin isn’t even sure why he’s crying.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


dowoon’s boyfriend comes over for dinner. he is equal parts polite and sarcastic. he looks at dowoon as if he’s hung the moon. sungjin’s mother approves of him.

  
  
  
  
  


junhyeok’s been on voyages all around the world, but he comes back to visit his “favorite little lovebirds.”  _ (“a better love story than romeo and juliet,”  _ sungjin remembers him saying _.)  _ younghyun is thrilled to see him and sungjin smiles fondly at the awed look on younghyun’s face while junhyeok regales them with tales about how the rest of the world’s doing.

“the united states is gone to shit, but we all already knew that,” junhyeok says. younghyun makes an affirming noise. sungjin’s mother covers dowoon’s ears and scolds junhyeok not to swear in front of young children. dowoon, blushing, bats her hands away and reminds her that he’s only two years younger than sungjin.

the united states had been the first country to disintegrate. sungjin’s heard horror stories about the state of the interior of the continent. the coastal cities are kind of okay but still pretty sketchy. once, before the world ended, he’d wanted to visit. now he never wants to go.

junhyeok has small souvenirs for all of them, somehow even one for dowoon’s boyfriend, who’s been shy and silent the entire time junhyeok’s been seated at the kitchen table, all loud laughter and brash jokes and sharp edges.

sungjin’s mother gets a silk dress from china. younghyun gets an instrument that sungjin doesn’t know the name of from somalia. dowoon gets a preserved flower from japan. his boyfriend gets a stuffed toy, also from japan.

junhyeok pulls sungjin away from everyone else, exclaiming over their presents, into the living room. “i spent more on you than the rest of them, kid, and didn’t want them to feel slighted,” he explains when sungjin voices his confusion.

“still confused,” sungjin says.

“it’s a tattoo thing,” junhyeok says.

sungjin still doesn’t get it.

junhyeok sighs. “younghyun told me about your sharpie drawings, his star and your heart. i see now that you’ve stopped drawing them, presumably since he’s here with you, but i found the whole idea rather romantic, even though it’s terrible for your skin. so i found a tattoo needle and ink and got a tutorial from the artist about how to do it, and if you don’t mind, i can tattoo a heart on your wrist and a star on his--”

the rest of his sentence is cut off when sungjin tackles him in a hug.

  
  
  
  


sungjin’s mother is skeptical at first when sungjin tells her about junhyeok’s tattoo idea. younghyun is deliriously happy about it and is more enthusiastic about trying to convince her to let him do it than sungjin is.

she does smack the back of his head when he tells her about the sharpie thing. he winces and decides that he probably deserved that.

eventually, though, after a couple days of sungjin and younghyun acting extra couple-y in front of her at all opportunities, she gives them the green light, which is good, because junhyeok has been getting antsy, staying in one place for so long.

it hurts. a lot. it doesn’t help that junhyeok is super inexperienced.

but at the end of it, after a bit of blood and some stifled screams, sungjin has a heart tattooed on his wrist and younghyun has a star tattooed on his.

they have to keep the tattoos protected until the skin heals fully. junhyeok isn’t very clear on that part, just tells them to not let it get infected. sungjin’s mother worries more than she should about that part, in sungjin’s opinion.

junhyeok sails off and sungjin waves until the boat has disappeared over the horizon. younghyun rolls his eyes fondly and kisses sungjin’s wrist, right below the tattoo.

  
  
  
  
  


the weather warms up, the sun peeks out from behind clouds more often than not, and the traveling merchants begin to sell seeds. younghyun is so adorably excited about gardening and farming that sungjin decides to help with the planting this year. he’s opted out of it before, mind too far away to care much.

three months three weeks three days since the subject of all his wandering thoughts came back.

sungjin quite likes the uniformity of that particular number.

his mother is thrilled when he mentions planting, and the four of them--five, including dowoon’s boyfriend--spend a happy couple of weeks in the sunshine, getting dirt under their nails and on the knees of their jeans, planting vegetables and flowers.

younghyun smells like green growing things when he crawls into bed each night. sungjin doesn’t mind.

  
  
  
  
  


younghyun is still scared of thunderstorms.

spring storms are secretly sungjin’s favorite kind of weather. he loves how dark the sky gets in the middle of the day, the lightning arcing across the whole black sky, the rain pounding the roof and the ground in sheets so dense you can’t see five meters in front of you.

but for the boy he loves, he’s willing to put aside that favoritism to hold younghyun and whisper stupid sappy things under his breath and kiss every inch of his face and wrap his entire body around the smaller, hugging tight, an unspoken promise to never let go.

during one of these storms, younghyun says something about junhyeok. it’s unintelligible, not helped by the fact that younghyun breaks into sharp sobs, and sungjin has to rub circles into his back for a good twenty minutes until he can make out younghyun’s words.

“i hope he’s okay,” younghyun says finally. “i hope it isn’t storming where he is. i hope that he has clear skies and a nice breeze and is eating good fish and delivering mail and--and--and bringing smiles to people--”

sungjin hadn’t realized just how deep of an impression junhyeok had left on younghyun until now.

younghyun’s biological father was pretty shit, as fathers go. mostly absent, always working, cold, unwilling to listen, homophobic. not a real great guy.

“he’s a great role model,” sungjin says after a moment in which he wrestles with words that have never quite been his friend.

younghyun sniffles, burrowing into sungjin’s chest and squeaking adorably at a clap of thunder. “yeah, he is.”

  
  
  
  


okay, sungjin knows it’s stupid.

he knows that younghyun loves him, adores him, cherishes him, and he reciprocates all of that, but jealousy is an ugly bitch that is poking a tiny little hole in his chest, right below his ribcage. he knows that younghyun doesn’t love junhyeok, simply admires him, and that it is extraordinarily selfish to want younghyun to only ever see sungjin.

still.

  
  
  
  


sungjin takes the insecurity, ties it up, puts it in a box, and shoves it off the convenient cliff in the back of his mind that he pushes everything he doesn’t want to think about off of.

he’s had younghyun back for four months two weeks three days, and that’s really what matters.

  
  
  
  
  


the first plants start sprouting.

younghyun spends five days straight sitting at the desk in sungjin’s room, drafting plans for an irrigation system. he’s always been more mathematically inclined.

sungjin spends those five days with his mother and dowoon, watering the plants, pulling up weeds, sometimes just enjoying the sun on their faces and the dirt on their hands. it feels good to be connected to nature. sungjin does have to admit that the end of the world made it a lot easier to be out in the physical world.

the irrigation system, as bizarre as it looks on paper, works pretty well. younghyun only tries it on a few rows of plants at first, not wanting to destroy the entire harvest. when it is successful, he gets permission from everyone who farms the land in their community and implements it everywhere.

“you’re a genius, you know that?” sungjin tells him one evening, as the sun is setting. his mother is painting the sunset with the paints dowoon bought her for christmas on the patio. he and younghyun are curled up in adirondack chairs pushed as close together as possible. they’re looking out over the fields, the greenest sungjin’s ever seen them, thanks to younghyun.

“ ‘m not,” younghyun murmurs, voice muffled from where his face is pressed into the crook of sungjin’s neck in embarrassment.

“so many more people are going to get to eat well this year because of you,” sungjin says. he tilts younghyun’s chin up, bringing their faces level. “you wanted to save everyone, remember? this is a pretty good start.”

younghyun tries to duck his head again. sungjin kisses him instead.

  
  
  
  
  


five months exactly since younghyun came back.

“i’m so glad you’re back,” sungjin says, voice wobbling in the way voices wobble when the person speaking is attempting to hold back tears. his throat hurts with the effort. “i don’t know what i would’ve done if you hadn’t come back to me.”

“trust me, babe, that was the only thing on my mind,” younghyun says. “i’m never letting you go again.”

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading!! please leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed, they make me smile
> 
> hmu on tumblr @bestfluteninja
> 
> i'm off now to work on a jaepil spinoff in this universe! wish me luck
> 
> (spoiler: the jaepil spinoff is set in the u.s. think solo: a star wars story-esque adventures. i think.)


End file.
